Dutton presents Night Drawing, marking self-taught artist Rose deSmith Greenman’s first solo exhibition in New York of unknown works on paper and rare sketchbooks. 

The catalyst leading to a torrent of drawing began inexplicably as Greenman showed signs of cognitive decline at the age of seventy two. She fervently composed her imaginings — or elaborated-upon still-lives — as she sat in her armchair in her tiny Newton apartment, often secluded through days and nights, or at her daughter’s house. 

This presentation evokes the sense of quiet winding infinitude of working at night and is comprised of imagined drawings and depictions of dioromas within vessels using Greenman’s favored materials of everyday markers, ballpoint pen, and pencil; drawings from her later years with lively colors that push into geometric forms; and two diminutive intimate landscapes. Using scraps of paper she accumulated and versos of pieces of mail, Greenman never reflected on her making and definitively dismissed any mention of her work by inquiring family members as being “only my ‘doodles!’”, while silently rolling works up to tuck into her bedskirt and stacking bundles deep in her closet. 

Drawing was a sanctuary and a journey which conjured and inquired memory and inhabited a place to experiment, interpret, and marvel. Greenman’s drawings were invariably spurred on by a neurological shift, a precedent of which can be found in late de Kooning. Alongside this, Greenman’s sensibility, unconstrained playfulness, wonder, whimsy and world-building can be seen in her contemporaries such as Calder (his flea circus), and Dubuffet, with reverberations of James Castle, skirting mark making that speaks to early Warhol. These drawings of Greenman’s are now being shown after being tucked away in obscurity, these unsung works on paper bringing a vital new voice to the fore.